Huggers need not apply

A hug is not just a hug. It’s a full-body physical and emotional event. It’s the spark in a relationship — any relationship — that ignites unity. It elevates the hugger and the hugged from stranger status to acquaintance, at least.

Some people are huggers. Others, like me, are not. If someone swoops in, arms extended, I get stiffer than the fine for drinking and driving.

Being a nonhugger in the world of huggers is like being a vegetarian at a pig roast. Things get complicated.

I inhale shampoo, cologne, cigarette smoke or all three. Sometimes I want to sneeze, other times to comment on the nice-smelling hair. I resist, thinking it’s almost like a doctor noting someone’s taut figure. Wildly inappropriate.

My aversion toward the great embrace started as early as I can remember. Maybe even in diaper days. People hugged me a lot.

They held on till I coughed from the lack of air.

Regardless, family, family friends, even my principal, wrapped me in their arms. The latter two, it seems, were terribly out of tune with my body language. The former, sensing how uncomfortable I was, used it to torture me.

My biggest hug conundrum happens at work. With a hug, you cross the line from the customary professional handshake, or even the accidental brush at the coffee cart, to a body-to-body connection. I work in a newsroom, not on a court or a field. Journalism is not a contact sport.

Yet hugs are so prevalent, they’ve become accepted touching. Even the President is inclined to hug total strangers. Which makes hugs seem required at office going-away parties or in congratulatory or consolatory moments. This is an intimacy I want with few colleagues.

My hugging issue (yeah, it’s an issue) extends into relationships, too. Not being Super Hugger doesn’t mean I love any less passionately, or I am not attracted to my boyfriend. I just find them unnecessary.

I put romantic embraces in one of three categories:

(A.) I look like I need comforting. (I may just be feeling the pizza I had for lunch.)

(B.) He did something wrong. (Most likely, a hug is not going to be enough).

(C.) He wants something. (There are more effective approaches).

I’m much more comfortable with a knuckle-to-knuckle dog pound or high five. Or pick me up in a firefighter’s carry. All these are more buddy-buddy and less publicly intimate. Hugs draw attention, create assumptions and are often at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Hugs, especially in public, make me feel deficient.

I’m working through this, though, trying to take myself away from singing “please release me; let me go” in my head to “I just want to be your teddy bear.”

Lately, I’ve encountered a lot of huggers (which pushes me to work on my hug comfort quotient). People who, when I extend my hand, ignore it and go right in for the full enchilada. A week or so ago, I met a University at Albany student who declared, “I don’t shake, I hug,” when meeting me.

Another acquaintance mentioned the height issue. She’s tiny — a bit taller than 5 feet — and most of her friends and family tower over her.

It’s the taller person’s job to come down to the shorter one’s level, she says. It helps with the whole interlocking of limbs, and prevents that face-in-chest encounter. She also told me I’m the best tall hugger she has ever hugged.

Coming from one of the most genuine huggers I know, I have to think, maybe I am getting the hang of this.